


home isn't a place

by bluebeholder



Series: Season 12 Coda Fic [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 12x15 Coda, Angst, Canon Compliant, Friendship, Homelessness, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Season/Series 12 Spoilers, Therapist Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 05:55:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10269761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: "For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.” --Stephanie PerkinsFor Castiel, home is an uncertain thing. He doesn't know what it means, not really. As he travels with Kelvin toward the gate to Heaven, he calls Sam to find out what home might mean.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Misha's acting just about killed me, you guys. This season is just cementing the fact that right now the story is about Castiel and his journey--to what, we _just don't know_ , but it's a journey all the same. 
> 
> Have another coda fic set in the same canon-compliant 'verse exploring the implications of Cas going back to Heaven.

He convinces Kelvin that they should drive. The other angel acquiesces with an eagerness that’s frankly unnerving, given everything else that’s happening. He’s a bit more begrudging, though, at Castiel’s insistence that they stay in a motel overnight. “It’s this vessel,” Castiel says, “I can’t drive all night.”

“And I can’t drive,” Kelvin says. “So…probably for the best, man.”

They get a room at what is quite possibly the seediest motel Castiel has ever seen. Neither angel minds—it is, after all, only a place to rest their vessels—and it gives Castiel the opportunity to slip out of the room. “I should call the Winchesters,” he excuses. “If I don’t, they’ll be suspicious.” And Kelvin lets him go without comment. 

He goes out into the parking lot and sits on the corner, as far away from their room as he can. No traffic passes, this late at night, and so Castiel has plenty of privacy to think. This whole thing is strange and has Castiel impossibly wary, but the words Kelvin spoke in the diner are going round and round in his head. They’re upsetting. Disturbing, on a level that Castiel doesn’t even want to consider.

Home. Where is home, exactly? Is it in the bunker, where he’s run countless times when he’s injured? Is it in Heaven, where he’s spent millennia in harmony with all of Creation? Is it with Sam and Dean, who he loves more than he can possibly express with words? Is it with his siblings, who speak to him in the language of stars and gravity?

Castiel doesn’t have an answer for that.

So as he does so frequently these days, when he’s unsure of himself, he calls on Sam to help him.

The phone rings six times before Sam picks up, breathless. “Hey,” he says. “Sorry—I had to get out of the motel room so Dean wouldn’t hear.”

There’s the sound of cars rushing past in the background and Castiel thinks of Sam, standing with one hand in his pocket and the phone to his ear on a street corner just like this one. It’s nice, almost like Sam is really beside him. 

“It’s all right,” Castiel says. He pauses, not entirely sure where to go. He needs to speak to Sam, but he can’t reveal where he’s going. If he does, Sam and Dean will drop everything to run to him and convince him not to return to Heaven. While Castiel is fully willing to admit that it might be in his best interest, there’s no time for selfishness. It’s Heaven or nothing.

“You okay?” Sam asks, when the silence stretches out too long. 

Castiel shrugs, though Sam can’t see it. “As I ever am,” he says dryly.

Sam sounds like he’s smiling. “Preaching to the choir,” he says. 

“I need help, Sam,” Castiel admits.

“What’s up?” Sam asks, suddenly serious. “Is it bad? Should we—”

“No, no,” Castiel says. “I just…I didn’t know who else to talk to.”

“This about Dean?” Sam asks, gentle now. 

Castiel rubs his eyes with his free hand. “Yes. No. I don’t…it’s about you too.”

“That’s a first,” Sam teases lightly. 

“I love you too, you know that,” Castiel says. He needs Sam to hear that. 

Sam sounds like he’s smiling again. “I know,” he says. “So then what’s going on?”

“I don’t know where home is anymore,” Castiel says honestly. Sam waits, listening, and Castiel goes on. “You and Dean tell me to come home. When I meet angels they tell me to come home. And none of you mean the same place.”

“Home is wherever you want to be, Cas,” Sam says. His voice is sad, quiet. “I thought for the longest time that it was someplace in California. Then it was the Impala or some motel room. Now it’s the bunker. And that…might not be true anymore.”

That’s not a reassuring thought. “Sam,” Cas says sharply, “has something happened?”

“Nothing you’ve gotta worry about,” Sam says. “This is about you, remember?”

Castiel narrows his eyes. “Do I need to come find you?”

Sam laughs, a little bit harshly. “Nah,” he says. “This…I have to tackle this on my own. Point is, Cas, home doesn’t have to be one place forever. It moves. Hell, I’m pretty sure that Dean thinks wherever I am counts as home and he doesn’t give a shit about anything else.”

“That’s Dean for you,” Castiel says. “He’d lie to your face if you said that out loud.”

“He would,” Sam agrees fondly. 

“And you think that I don’t have a physical place for my home,” Castiel says.

Sam follows the abrupt change in topic. “I dunno,” he says. “You might. Or maybe not, I don’t know how you think about stuff like that. All I know is that you’ve got wandering feet as bad as Dean or me. It’s like…you haven’t decided what home means to you yet.”

Castiel huffs out a small breath, not quite exasperation but close enough. “That’s why I called you,” he says. “Things make more sense, when you say them.”

“Thanks,” Sam says. 

A moment passes in silence.

“Did any of this help?” Sam asks. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re doing, and I’m pretty sure you’d lie to me if I asked, but…”

“It did,” Castiel says. “I’m not lying about that, Sam. You helped.”

“Good,” Sam says. “You know…there’s no rush to figure out where you belong, Cas.”

“I know,” Castiel says, and that’s a lie. There is a rush. He and Kelvin will return to Heaven tomorrow and Castiel has to make a decision before he walks through that gate. 

“Take care of yourself, okay?” Sam says.

Castiel presses the palm of his hand into the gravel so hard that it hurts. “I will,” he says. 

“And call me if you need to hash out any more of this,” Sam says. 

“I will,” Castiel repeats. 

And then Sam’s gone, the phone dead in Castiel’s hand. He tucks it into his pocket and folds his arms around his knees, looking up the sky as if he could see the stars through the neon light pollution. He was definitely lying about that conversation helping. It only confused him more. Now he has three ideas to contend with. Is it the bunker? Is it Heaven?

Worse, is it a person? Is it two people? Is that why this is so difficult to understand? Is it that he’s only happy when he’s with Sam and Dean? Are they his home?

Is it that Dean is his home?

What, exactly, does that mean for Castiel? 

Just like everything else, he doesn’t have any idea. And he has no time to make any decision on the matter. One way or another, he’s going to have to choose. That’s unavoidable.

And as much as he’d like to make one of those choices, he won’t be able to. Because what he’d told Sam weeks ago was true. It’s one thing for Castiel to say that he prefers the human world, to live in the bunker, to be a hunter. No one will judge him for that choice any more than they already judge him for every other choice he’s ever made. Castiel can live with that. 

It’s an entirely different thing for him to say that a human, a man with eyes that are as brilliant as the stars and shine with more grace than an angel would ever have, is the person he’d like to stay with. 

That would break a law that cannot be ignored. 

So if what Sam said is true—if Castiel’s home lies in a person, rather than a physical place—then Castiel will never be able to come home. 

He gets to his feet and turns back to the motel. He’s halfway across the parking lot when Kelvin opens the door and looks out at him, waiting. Castiel hesitates. If there’s ever a moment to run, it’s now. If he bolted, and called Sam when he was out of Kelvin’s reach, Sam and Dean would drop everything to run to him and take him back to the bunker and keep him safe against impossible odds. And if he goes through that door, if he follows Kelvin back to Heaven, Castiel knows with terrible certainty that he will never be able to come back to Sam and Dean. 

The hesitation lasts only a moment.

The motel room is warm, when Castiel walks inside. “They’re reassured,” he says. “They understand that I’m all right and they don’t need to come looking.”

“Good,” Kelvin says. He claps Castiel on the shoulder, companionable, brotherly. “You are all right, and they’ll never truly need to look for you again. You’ll be safe and home at last.”

The words are empty in Castiel’s ears, but he smiles anyway. “It will be good to come home,” he says simply. 

And that, just like everything he’s said tonight, is another lie.


End file.
